The Serf-Owners at Work

Published:Iskra, No. 8, September 10, 1901.

      Published according to theIskratext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1961,

      Moscow,Volume 5,

      pages95-100.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

OnJune 8, 1901, a law was adopted governing the grants of state lands
	in Siberia to private persons. How this new law will be applied, the
	future will show; but its character is so instructive, it so strikingly
	demonstrates the undisguised nature and the real strivings of the
	tsarist government, that it should be analysed thoroughly and made known
	as widely as possible among the working class and the peasantry.

Ourgovernment has long been granting doles to the noble, aristocratic
	landlords. It established for them the Nobles’ Bank, it granted them all
	sorts of privileges in obtaining loans and relief in the payment of
	arrears, it helped them to arrange a strike of the millionaire
	sugar-refiners in order to raise prices and increase their profits; it
	took care to provide the ruined sons of the aristocracy with soft jobs
	as rural superintendents, and it is now arranging for the government
	purchase of vodka on very favourable terms for the noble
	distillers. However, in making grants of state lands, it not only makes
	gifts to the richest and most aristocratic exploiters, but creates anewclass of exploiters and dooms millions of peasants and
	workers to permanent bondage to new landlords.

Letus examine the principal features of the new law. It must be
	observed, first of all, that before its introduction in the Council of
	State by the Minister of Agriculture and State Property, the law was
	discussed at aspecial conference on the affairs of the
	nobility. It is generally known that in Russia today it is not the
	workers and peasants, but the noble landlords who suffer most from
	poverty, and so this “special conference” hastened to devise
	measures by whichtheir poverty might be relieved. State lands in Siberia will be sold and
      leased to “private persons” for the purpose of “private
      enterprise”; but foreigners and non-Russian subjects of the tsar
      (the Jews included among the latter) are prohibitedfor everfrom
      acquiring these lands in any way. The lands may be leased (and we shall
      see that this is the most advantageous transaction for the future
      landlords) only to nobles, “who”, as the law states,
      “owing to their economic reliability, are the most desirable
      landowners to have in Siberia from. the standpoint of the
      government”. Thus, the standpoint of the government is that the
      labouring population must be enslaved to the big landed aristocracy. How
      big can be seen from the fact that salable allotments may not exceedthree thousand dessiatines, while no limit at all is placed on
      the amount of land leased, and the term of the leases may be for a periodup to ninety-nine years!According to the government’s
      calculations, a poor landlord needstwo hundred timesas much
      land as a peasant, who is given fifteen dessiatines of land in Siberia for
      himself and his family.

Theeasy terms and the exceptions to the rule which the law provides for
      the landlords are truly astounding. The lessee pays nothing for the first
      five years. If he purchases the land he has leased (whichrightthe new law gives him), payment is spread over a period of thirty-seven
      years. With special permission, an area of land exceeding 3,000
      dessiatines may be set aside for sale, land may be sold at agreed prices
      arid not by auction, while arrears may be postponed for one or even three
      years. It must not be forgotten that generally only the higher dignitaries
      and persons with court connections, etc., will take advantage of the new
      law—and such people will obtain these easy terms and the
      exemptions quite casually, in the course of a drawing-room conversation
      with a governor or a minister.

Butthere’s the rub! Of what use are these bits of land, three thousand
      dessiatines in area, to the landowning generals if there is no
      “muzhik” forced to work for these generals? However rapidly poverty
      is increasing among the people in Siberia, the local peasant is nevertheless
      much more in dependent than the “Russian” peasant and he has not
      been trained to work under the bludgeon. The new law is intendedto train him. “The lands appointed for private enterprisesshall, as far as possible, be divided into lots alternating with
	areasheld by the peasant allotment holders”, says Article 4
      of the new law. The tsarist government displays its solicitude for the
      poor peasants and tries to provide “means of livelihood” for
      them. Ten years ago, the same Mr. Yermolov who now, as Minister of
      Agriculture and State Property, has introduced into the Council of State
      the new Siberian land law providing for the disposal of state lands to
      private persons, wrote a book (anonymously) entitledThe Crop
	Failure and the Distress of the People.In that work he openly
      declared that there was no reason for permitting peasants who could
      obtain “a livelihood” from their local landlords to migrate
      to Siberia. Russian statesmen do not hesitate to express purely feudal
      views; peasants were created to work for the landlords, and peasants,
      therefore, must not be “permitted” to migrate to a place of
      their choice, if thereby the landlords will be deprived of cheap
      labour. And when, despite all the difficulties, the red tape, and even
      the downright prohibition, the peasants still continued to migrate to
      Siberia in hundreds of thousands, the tsarist government, acting like
      the steward of an old-time manorial lord, hastened after them to work
      them to exhaustion in their new habitations. If, however,
      “alternating” with the puny peasant

      allotments[1]and peasant lands (the best of which are already occupied), there will be
      lots of three thousand dessiatines belonging to the noble landlords, then
      all temptation to migrate to Siberia will disappear very soon. The more
      cramped the conditions of the surrounding peasants become, the more the
      new landlords’ land will increase in value; the peasants will be obliged
      to hire themselves out cheaply, or lease land from the landlords at
      exorbitant rates—just as in “Russia”. The new law sets
      out precisely to create as quickly as possible a new paradise for the
      landlords and a new hell for the peasants; there is a special clause on
      the leasing of land for asingleseason. While special permission
      is required to sublease state lands, it is permitted quitefreely for one season. All that the landlord need trouble about is to
      engage a steward, who will sublease land by the dessiatine to the peasants
      living on the allotments “alternating” with the landlord’s
      land, and send his master the net profit.

Probablymany nobles will not care to carry on even such an
      “enterprise”. In that case, they can make a nice little pile
      at one stroke by reselling the state land to real farmers. It is no
      accident that the newlawhas been timed with the construction of
      a railroad in Siberia, when banishment to Siberia has been abolished, and
      when migration to Siberia has increased to an enormous extent; all this
      will inevitably lead (and is already leading) to a rise in land
      values. Hence, the granting of state lands to private persons at the
      present time is nothing more nor less than plunder of the Treasury by the
      nobles. The state lands are rising in value, but they are being leased or
      sold on highly advantageous terms to generals and people of that stripe,
      who will benefit by the rising prices. In Ufa Gubernia, for instance, in
      one uyezd alone, the nobles and officials made the following transaction
      in land sold to them (on the basis of a similar law): they paid the
      government 60,000 rubles for the land and within two years sold it for
      580,000 rubles, obtaining for the mere resalemore than half a million
      rubles!From this instance we can imagine the millions of rubles that
      will pass into the pockets of the poverty-stricken landlords thanks to the
      land grants throughout Siberia.

Withall sorts of lofty arguments the government and its adherents seek to
      cover up this naked robbery. They talk about the development of culture in
      Siberia, and of the enormous importance of model farms. As a matter of
      fact, the large estates, which place the neighbouring peas ants in a
      hopeless position, can at the present time serve only to develop the most
      uncultured methods of exploitation. Model farms are not established by
      robbing the Treasury, and the grant of lands will lead simply to land
      speculation among the nobles and officials, or to farming methods in which
      bondage and usury will flourish. The noble aristocrats, in alliance with
      the government, have prohibited Jews and other non-Russians (whom they try
      to present to the ignorant people as particularly outrageous exploiters)
      from acquiring state lands in Siberia, in orderthat they maythemselvesengage in the worst type of exploitation
      without hindrance.

Thereis talk also of the political significance of having the
      social-estate of landed nobility in Siberia; among the intelligentsia, it
      is said, there is a very large number of former exiles, of unreliable
      people there, who need to be counterbalanced by the establishment of a
      reliable support of the state, a reliable “local”
      element. This talk contains a greater and profounder truth thanGrazhdanin[2]andMoskovskiye Vedomostiimagine. The police state is arousing so much hostility against itself
      among the masses that it finds it necessary artificially to create groups
      that can serve as pillars of the fatherland. It is essential for the
      government to create a class of big exploiters, who would be under
      obligation to it for everything and dependent upon its grace, who would
      make enormous profits by the most despicable methods (speculation and
      kulak exploitation), and, consequently, could always be relied upon to
      support every tyranny and oppression. The Asiatic government must find
      support in Asiatic large landownership, in a feudal system of
      “granting lands”. And if it is not possible at present to
      grant “populated estates”, it is possible at all events to
      grant estatesalternatingwith the lands of peasants who are
      becoming more and more destitute. If it is not convenient simply to grant
      thousands of dessiatines of land gratis to the Court lickspittles, it is
      possible to cover up this wholesale bestowal of lands by their sale or
      “leasing” (for99years) that is attended by
      thousands of privileges. When we compare this land policy with that of
      modern progressive countries like America, for example, can we call it
      anything else but feudal? In America, no one woulddaretalk
      about permitting or not permitting migration; for in that country, every
      citizen has the right to go where he pleases. In that country every one
      who desires to engage in farming has the rightby lawto occupy
      vacant land in the outlying parts of the country. In America, they are not
      creating a class of Asiatic satraps, but a class of energetic farmers who
      have developed the productive forces of the country. Thanks to the
      abundant free land there, the working class in America enjoys the highest
      standard of living in the world.

Andwhat a period our government has chosen for passing this serf-owners’
      law! It is a period of the most acute industrial crisis, when tens and
      hundreds of thousands are unemployed, when millions of peasants are again
      suffering from famine. The government has exerted all its efforts to
      prevent the disaster from being given “publicity”. That is why
      it has sent the unemployed workers back to their village homes; that is
      why it has transferred food distribution from the Zemstvos to the police
      officials; that is why it has prohibited private persons from organising
      food-kitchens for the famine-stricken; and that is why it has gagged the
      press. But when the famine “publicity”, so unpleasant to the
      ears of the well-fed, died down, Our Father the Tsar set to work. to
      assist the poverty-stricken landlords and poor unfortunate courtier
      generals. We repeat, our task at the present time is simply to bring the
      contents of this new law to the knowledge of all. As they become
      acquainted with it, the most undeveloped sections of the workers, and the
      most backward and downtrodden peasants, will understand whom the present
      government serves and what kind of government the people must have.

[1]By the terms of the 1861 Reform, peasant allotments, unlike
      peasant lands, could not be sold.—Tr.

[2]Grazhdanin(The Citizen)—a reactionary
      newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1872 to 1914. From the 1880s on, it
      spoke for the extreme monarchists. The newspaper existed mainly on subsidies
      from the tsarist government.